Creating the dramatic, intense sound for ‘Deepwater Horizon’:

The Deepwater Horizon accident was a devastating disaster for the environment in the Gulf of Mexico. And now, the Deepwater Horizon movie tells the story of just what happened on that fateful day on the oil rig, from the crew’s perspective. The movie features Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, Gina Rodriguez, John Malkovich and Kate Hudson, and is currently number 2 at the US box office.

The Deepwater Horizon sound team was led by supervising sound editor Wylie Stateman – and here, sound designer/re-recording mixer Dror Mohar tells the story behind the dramatic sound for the movie:

Written by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of Dror Mohar and David Lee

The teaser trailer for Deepwater Horizon

Creating a dramatic film about a historical event is tricky business. A story is a very powerful thing. It has the power to rewrite events, turning villains to heroes and vice versa, depending on the perspective of the storyteller. Director Peter Berg, known for the biographical action film Lone Survivor, takes on the Deepwater Horizon disaster. In what light will he paint this event in his film? For the sound team, led by supervising sound editor Wylie Stateman of Twenty Four Seven Sound, Deepwater Horizon presented an interesting landscape.

The oil rig was a 29-story machine that never stopped. It was a mad-made island surrounded by the sea. It was a temporary home for the crew employed to keep it running. Sound designer/re-recording mixer Dror Mohar, at Technicolor in Hollywood, CA, has been a long-time collaborator with Stateman. In addition to Deepwater Horizon, they’ve created sound together for films like Lone Survivor, Django Unchained, and Inglourious Basterds. Here, Mohar shares his story of creating the mechanized world of Deepwater Horizon and designing its destruction too.

How was this film a unique experience for you?

The story of the disaster onboard the Deepwater Horizon and its implications is extraordinary. It’s an important story that demands answers to difficult questions regarding the means and ends of our energy industries – it was also a very ambitious cinematic undertaking. For both these reasons, being a part of it was an inspiring experience.

It’s an important story that demands answers to difficult questions regarding the means and ends of our energy industries

In terms of sound, creating a sonic vocabulary that describes the technology, human trials and incredible forces of nature was an intense and uniquely satisfying journey. For the first half of the project, I worked with Peter [Berg], Colby [Parker], and Gabriel [Fleming] at their picture cutting room where we worked in short, intense bursts to explore sound elements, designs, and treatments that speak to the identity of the story. This collaboration was very special in that the rapid exchanges led to picture, sound, and visual effects constantly informing one another. It was an opportunity to push the definition of storytelling both within the frame and beyond it.

Dror Mohar on the Deepwater Horizon mixing stage

What were some challenges you had in creating the sound design?

The film involves a lot of technical information, destruction and action sequences that hand off to one another. In terms of sound, these are components that can quickly saturate the experience and the biggest challenge was to design and choreograph the sound in ways that would immerse, but not exhaust, the audience. This meant a lot of experimentation with size, weight, tonal character and where sounds start and stop. It was a task that we carried out all the way to the final printmaster.

The biggest challenge was to design and choreograph the sound in ways that would immerse, but not exhaust, the audience

The designs were tailored to describe the extreme conditions onboard the rig, inform the audience of the technology of oil drilling and express the specifics and magnitude of the destruction. As far as the choice and placement of sounds – or their absence – the focus was twofold: to ensure that the sound effects never overpowered the human experience of the crew and to clearly articulate the implications of mechanical failures.

One challenge was to create acoustical space, since the geography of the story happens in two very isolated locations: on the ocean floor, five thousand feet underwater, and up on the rig platform in the middle of the ocean. In order to express scale, speed and distance, some of the design favored feeling over sound accuracy.
In terms of rig mechanics, we needed to establish the sounds and functionality of the rig’s components under normal conditions and later under overloaded conditions. The rig’s navigation system, engines, pumping systems and BOP (blow out preventer) on the ocean floor all needed to be established and become quickly familiar to the audience.

Get all sorts of ambisonic debris recordings in this release from Spheric Collection – perfect for earthquakes, landslides, explosions and beyond. Debris is the material you will need for a house and gallery collapsing. From very small stone and dust to large rocks, this collection is a good set of mineral sounds – covering everything from impacts, continuous falling debris, rocks poured from various heights, light and heavy falling debris sounds, a number of falling rock sounds, to rocky explosions and blasts, glass sounds and more. Always immersive all sounds are ambisonic recordings.

About Ambisonics:

This is an Ambisonics sound effects library - and by using the free SoundField SurroundZone 2 plugin you can convert the B-format files into your preferred format (stereo, 5.0, 5.1, 6.0, 6.1, 7.0 or 7.1 surround). Note: The library also contains ready-made stereo mixdowns for your convenience.

If you are a musician who wants to define the building blocks of an intense horror track or maybe you are a sound designer who needs to create a musical moment in a scene from a sound design perspective, this library can help you to achieve those things.

Metals, vinyl noises, voices, ukuleles, flutes, guitars and clocks were used to create this intense pack of 164 loops and 44 Fx.

Check the main demo!! It was created very quickly using only the sounds of the pack with NO ADDED EFFECTS, only mixing the levels of the sounds and shows you the intensity of what you can create with this library!!

Vintage Film Tech Effects features Slate claps, Beeps, Bloops, Film leader tone, Static, 2 Pops, digital dropouts, record player noise and much more. We’ve collected these vintage sounds from old Hollywood dailies reels, and film stock. 206 tracks that recreate the sound of the lost art of classic Film, TV and radio production.

Looking for authentic ambient sounds of Japanese transportation? Look no further! Field recordist and composer Ryan Ayers travelled to Japan in April of 2019 and captured this wonderful collection. His journey took him from Osaka to Tokyo to Fukuoka and all points in-between. Travel aboard the trains of the JR, the famous Shinkansen, the Hanyu Ferry and more! Explore the train platforms and station terminals of Osaka. Get lost in the Kansai International Airport. There is a subway noodle shop as well as specialty food markets. Authentic walla and natural activity give this collection the ear candy necessary to be an integral part of great soundscapes.

This is a purely recorded sound pack. Nothing is synthetic or layered here. What you hear is exactly what was captured on location. We edited and mastered the files to bring out the best parts of the recordings. Most of the recordings have been ready-made into loops for ease of use. As always, we have embedded the files with detailed metadata for easy database searches.

Whether you’re working on an exciting Pirates of the Caribbean style video game or a relaxing sea-faring romance, the hours of exceptional background loops and additional cutting edge ship sounds contained within this sound pack will set your project on a course to excellence!

EXPLORE AN ENTIRE SHIP

Whether your adventure takes place in the MAIN DECK, CABIN, BELOW DECK, atop the CROWS NEST, in a MEDIEVAL PORT, or on a DISTANT SHIP in the HIGH SEAS we’ve got you covered! Each ambience contains MULTIPLE VARIATIONS, ALL WEATHER CONDITIONS, and MULTIPLE INTENSITIES to cover each and every part of the ship, on the rough and calm seas, this sound effects library is perfect for every situation you need.

A JOURNEY TO REMEMBER

Our expert team of sound designers have meticulously crafted each ambience into CONTINUOUS, NON-REPETITIVE, DRAG AND DROP-READY LOOPS that will serve as perfect background audio for your game, film, animation, live event, or even as relaxing background audio! We have even included FULL and SIMPLIFIED MIXES, ISOLATED WEATHER, OCEAN and WOOD CRACKING versions, SHORT and LONG non-repetitive variants, and numerous other options for your convenience!

TREASURE APLENTY

With FREE UPDATES, FOREVER! and FREE BONUS AMBIENCES: MEDIEVAL PORT and isolated, SEA, SAILS and FLAG FLAPPING, Ship’s BELL RINGING, WEATHER and WOOD CRACKING SOUNDS, all supplied in industry standard Hi-Rez WAV and Hi-Quality MP3 formats, there’s no better time to set sail on the high seas with this ONE OF A KIND sound pack!

So what are you waiting for? Take command of this UNIQUE library and begin your journey on the high seas today!

KEY FEATURES:

Huge variety of Old Wooden Ship Interior and Exterior Ambiences, All Weather Conditions and Additional Useful BONUS Sound Effects for every scene or situation.

What was the first sound you tackled for this film?

The design I tackled first was the opening sequence. The scene takes us down the pipe to the bottom of the ocean, revealing the BOP. This was a great introduction to the filmmakers’ stylistic approach. They were determined to have the audience “be the camera” to see what is going on under the hood. This also inspired the idea to use sections from the original recordings of Mike Williams’ original testimony as the very opening of the movie which we play over the opening titles.

How did you go about designing the mechanical elements, like the thrusters for example? Were those sounds created using sounds from libraries? Did you record any sounds in the field?

The mechanical sounds evolved and changed over time. Some of the machinery came from original recordings and some were a combination of recorded source together with design. I did a field recording in a port in Israel where I got access to pumping facilities and ships; these served as a great base for a lot of the industry we hear on the rig. For some of the big set pieces, I added a layer of design elements to inform a sense of weight, movement, and energy.
Expressing size and weight was tricky because details that I would have ordinarily omitted were necessary in order to understand functionality. The solution was to consider cause and effect. Favoring the reaction of the environment to an event in the design created the impression of width and weight while making room for specifics. This was done in the form of structural vibrations, impacts on the rig, echoes to the PAs, tonal elements to the underwater environment, and water movement to express the force of the underwater mechanics. In the case of the thrusters, the final sound is a combination of elements that Wylie Stateman (supervising sound editor) designed with Harry Cohen, Sylvain Lasseur and myself.

The oil rig is surrounded by water. How did you use the ocean in your design? What was your approach there?

In terms of the elements that contributed to the disaster, the ocean itself was not a major player. On the day of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the sea was actually calm. The lack of water turbulence was a very valuable tool. It presented the opportunity to use it exactly as that, as an element of quiet and calm to counter the chaos. This was very effective in the wide shots of the rig where the sounds speak to the vastness of the geography and isolation of the rig in contrast to the violent water at the bottom of the moonpool and the rushing water inside the lower decks after the explosion.

On the oil rig, things are breaking down and exploding apart. How did you approach the different types of explosions in the film?

As with other elements of the story, the main focus was to clarify what the different explosions meant for the loss of control over the rig. Each breakdown, system malfunction or overload was given specific attention using a variety of elements. More important than the blasts themselves were their sources – each called for a different treatment. The first two major explosive events were the ‘kick’ and blowout, where pressure sent mud blasting out on the drilling floor. Here, the focus was on pressure and the force of the particles. The next major explosive events involved methane gas. The gas accelerated the engine to the point of overload and that is when fire exploded through the lower levels of the rig that resulted in an atomic-like explosion. This explosion is designed to be a massive, instantaneous eruption.

Recording fire sounds for Deepwater Horizon

How did Foley play a role in the sound design for the explosions and breakdowns?

Foley Supervisor Gary Hecker (at Sony Pictures Studios) provided us with a great palette of sounds. The Foley component was used in the designs to add visceral detail. Gary’s performances were great, both in the explosions and the portraits of the lead characters as they wade through the debris across the rig.

Any favorite audio tools for this film? Can you give some specific examples of how you used them?

As far as plug-ins and instruments go, I would say that my main tool was a series of processing chains of saturation, distortions, delays, futzing and low end. I used these in creating textures, hard edges and mass for things like the PAs, explosions and underwater movement. That said, I am more of a story guy than anything else. At the top of my list for gear is always a field recorder, great monitors and a good sounding room where, together with the filmmakers, I can shape sounds and make choices that stand the test of time. I look to find a singular sound signature that creates a connection to the visuals.

You got to do the sound design and then keep your hands on it through the mix. Is that natural for you? Do you feel it’s easy to make decisions about your sound design during the final mix in regards to what elements serve the story best?

Mixing is not only an extension of the editorial design process, it is an inseparable part of the design of the sound experience. Everybody does it differently. For me, it’s about when to listen and when to let go and just hear. To me, listening is about the sound and hearing is the perception of the entire experience. It’s a bit of a dance.
Maybe it’s just semantics, but the point is to pay attention in different ways to determine how it all feels together – to determine how the track performs.

To me, listening is about the sound and hearing is the perception of the entire experience

As far as making decisions on the stage, I am not precious about any sound that doesn’t work for the story – losing it is not a compromise, rather a step forward. That said, nobody is perfect and a great mixing partner will always help balance me out.
Being intimate with the material is a strength in the mixing chair – it lends to knowing what elements to reach for as we shape the track against dialogue, music and the intentions established by the filmmakers.

I do it with my own material so I wouldn’t hire someone like me if I were not mixing. Instead, I would get a great mixer who is a great storyteller that has serious technique and experience under his belt. Sometimes that’s better for the film. A full-time mixer brings to the table very different things than I do – we overlap but don’t replace one another.

A big thanks to Dror Mohar, Wylie Stateman and the sound team on Deepwater Horizon for the story behind the sound – and to Jennifer Walden for doing the interview!

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About Ambisonics:

This is an Ambisonics sound effects library - and by using the free SoundField SurroundZone 2 plugin you can convert the B-format files into your preferred format (stereo, 5.0, 5.1, 6.0, 6.1, 7.0 or 7.1 surround). Note: The library also contains ready-made stereo mixdowns for your convenience.

If you are a musician who wants to define the building blocks of an intense horror track or maybe you are a sound designer who needs to create a musical moment in a scene from a sound design perspective, this library can help you to achieve those things.

Metals, vinyl noises, voices, ukuleles, flutes, guitars and clocks were used to create this intense pack of 164 loops and 44 Fx.

Check the main demo!! It was created very quickly using only the sounds of the pack with NO ADDED EFFECTS, only mixing the levels of the sounds and shows you the intensity of what you can create with this library!!

Vintage Film Tech Effects features Slate claps, Beeps, Bloops, Film leader tone, Static, 2 Pops, digital dropouts, record player noise and much more. We’ve collected these vintage sounds from old Hollywood dailies reels, and film stock. 206 tracks that recreate the sound of the lost art of classic Film, TV and radio production.

Looking for authentic ambient sounds of Japanese transportation? Look no further! Field recordist and composer Ryan Ayers travelled to Japan in April of 2019 and captured this wonderful collection. His journey took him from Osaka to Tokyo to Fukuoka and all points in-between. Travel aboard the trains of the JR, the famous Shinkansen, the Hanyu Ferry and more! Explore the train platforms and station terminals of Osaka. Get lost in the Kansai International Airport. There is a subway noodle shop as well as specialty food markets. Authentic walla and natural activity give this collection the ear candy necessary to be an integral part of great soundscapes.

This is a purely recorded sound pack. Nothing is synthetic or layered here. What you hear is exactly what was captured on location. We edited and mastered the files to bring out the best parts of the recordings. Most of the recordings have been ready-made into loops for ease of use. As always, we have embedded the files with detailed metadata for easy database searches.

Whether you’re working on an exciting Pirates of the Caribbean style video game or a relaxing sea-faring romance, the hours of exceptional background loops and additional cutting edge ship sounds contained within this sound pack will set your project on a course to excellence!

EXPLORE AN ENTIRE SHIP

Whether your adventure takes place in the MAIN DECK, CABIN, BELOW DECK, atop the CROWS NEST, in a MEDIEVAL PORT, or on a DISTANT SHIP in the HIGH SEAS we’ve got you covered! Each ambience contains MULTIPLE VARIATIONS, ALL WEATHER CONDITIONS, and MULTIPLE INTENSITIES to cover each and every part of the ship, on the rough and calm seas, this sound effects library is perfect for every situation you need.

A JOURNEY TO REMEMBER

Our expert team of sound designers have meticulously crafted each ambience into CONTINUOUS, NON-REPETITIVE, DRAG AND DROP-READY LOOPS that will serve as perfect background audio for your game, film, animation, live event, or even as relaxing background audio! We have even included FULL and SIMPLIFIED MIXES, ISOLATED WEATHER, OCEAN and WOOD CRACKING versions, SHORT and LONG non-repetitive variants, and numerous other options for your convenience!

TREASURE APLENTY

With FREE UPDATES, FOREVER! and FREE BONUS AMBIENCES: MEDIEVAL PORT and isolated, SEA, SAILS and FLAG FLAPPING, Ship’s BELL RINGING, WEATHER and WOOD CRACKING SOUNDS, all supplied in industry standard Hi-Rez WAV and Hi-Quality MP3 formats, there’s no better time to set sail on the high seas with this ONE OF A KIND sound pack!

So what are you waiting for? Take command of this UNIQUE library and begin your journey on the high seas today!

KEY FEATURES:

Huge variety of Old Wooden Ship Interior and Exterior Ambiences, All Weather Conditions and Additional Useful BONUS Sound Effects for every scene or situation.